Mailing List flyrotary@lancaironline.net Message #38206
From: Wendell Voto <jwvoto@itlnet.net>
Subject: Re: [FlyRotary] MAP pressure sensors
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2007 23:27:52 -0500
To: Rotary motors in aircraft <flyrotary@lancaironline.net>
After you solve the pressure sensor problem, you might try putting a good quality capacitor or pair of capacitors (like 10ufd and .01ufd) across the Schottky diodes to pass the ac noise back to the battery.
Wendell
 

 

 The same approx. output indicates to me that the pressure transducers appear to be doing identical functions with changing altitude/ambient pressure.  So I would normally say the problem has to be down stream of the pressure transducer output, but I'm sure Tracy has chased that rabbit.  It is a puzzle

 

Al,

 

How did you go about measuring the output at different altitudes?  Did you actually have wires running to some sort of ohmmeter while in flight?  Or did you use a pressure chamber?  If pressure (vacuum) chamber did you have a separate vacuum source on the manifold lines? Otherwise, you would not have simulated altitude accurately.

David;

What I said:

“. . . even though the measured output from the A and B sensors are the same when the unit is powered up (out of the plane) at different altitudes (measured at 1400’ and 5300’).”

was not very clear.  The output measured at Ramona (1400’) was consistent; and that measured at Boulder, CO (5300’) was also – within less than a milivolt.  So this would suggest that the output response is the same, or IOW, at WOT, at different altitudes, A and B should be the same. The sensor on A also appeared to be in fine shape in all respects.  It is true that this is not the same as pulling a vacuum on the ports to say, 20” Hg with both at the same altitude.  That test seemed more difficult than buying a new sensor.  I should know next week whether that solves the problem.

 

In replacing the sensor, and further studying the circuit, my son says “ I installed the new MAP sensor, and added a ground lead from the sensor to the processor (I think the lack of a good ground return

was the source of the RF and other problems).  He has remarked before that his opinion is that the ground circuits on the board are not particularly resistant to RF issues.

 

With the diodes possibly causing interference, did you run a trial jumper across the diodes and did that in fact fix the problem?  Otherwise you could be barking up a long and tangled tree...

 

The thought that the power isolation diodes COULD be a source of the problem did not come to light until we were well down the road to a solution, and the additional filtering was added.  So that test was never done. It is speculation based on that feature being unique to my installation, and that I seemed to be the only one with the data settings corruption problem.

 

Al

Subscribe (FEED) Subscribe (DIGEST) Subscribe (INDEX) Unsubscribe Mail to Listmaster